Saturday, September 7, 2013

Back to school, and back to Breakfast Links - our tastiest links to other blogs, sites, articles, and images, all gathered fresh for you each week from around the Twitterverse.
• Beyond the grave: diagnosing a 10th c. Viking poet and warrior who had a legendarily hard head.
• A lady typist's ghost on Wall Street, 1901.
• Turning heads in 1916 & 1917: fashionable images from the Bellas Hess & Co catalogue.
• Tight-ropes over the Thames: a precarious history.
• This week in 1813, Lord Byron cannot bear to give up Annabella Milbanke, and writes a very long letter to her to prove it.
• The ritual of the morning toilette is another of Louis XIV's contributions to fashion.
• The inspiration Jane Austen found in Chawton.
• "Am I too square?" How a boy asked a girl to dance in 1955.
• How to elope in style, 1793.
• New York's 1883 Hotel Gerlach boasted a rooftop kennel with treadmill, stained woodwork, and "green walls with pictures hung."
• Emily Dickinson's personal collection of sheet music.
• "Sorry-for-sin Coupard": 20 of the worst and 20 of the most strangely pleasant Puritan names.
• Inside Manchester's historic Victoria Baths.
• "You will then know how to talke to me": in 1864, an ex-slave wrote to his former owner and told her he was returning with an army to rescue his children.
• Not for faint-hearted cooks: 18th c. recipe for potting a wild fowl.
• Rare color photographs of Imperial Russia, 1909-1915.
• A colonial Virgina tale of sex and betrayal: Bartholomew Dandridge sets a trap, c 1760.
• Ten buildings that survived the Great Fire of London in 1666.
• The Eidophusikon, an 18th c. animated miniature theatre which "held the mirror up to nature."
• It's a secret to everyone: a tiny landscape painting hidden until you bend the pages of this 19th c. book.
• Medford, MA home recognized for bringing to life the history of slavery in colonial Massachusetts.
• Why you should visit the Times Square Visitor Center (even if you live in New York.)
• The infamous Hellfire Club is reduced to a 19th c. tourist attraction in West Wycombe.
• Goat suet & goose grease are some of the unusual ingredients for 18th c. lip salves and other beauty products.
• A very sympathetic husband suffers from male morning sickness and labor pains, c 1690.Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirlsfor updates daily.

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A Polite Explanation

There’s a big difference in how we use history. But we’re equally nuts about it. To us, the everyday details of life in the past are things to talk about, ponder, make fun of -- much in the way normal people talk about their favorite reality show.

We talk about who’s wearing what and who’s sleeping with whom. We try to sort out rumor or myth from fact. We thought there must be at least three other people out there who think history’s fascinating and fun, too. This blog is for them.